Weeks 8 and 9: Edinburgh and London

R.I.P McGonnagall

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! The holiday spirit is in full swing in England. There are Christmas trees in all the malls and carols play while you shop. We’re expecting snow next weekend which will further increase the festive mood. My weekend travels are winding down so I have time to work on my essays. Come December though, I’ll be country hopping for 3 weeks straight.

Edinburgh Castle

My last getaway with my Nottingham friends was to Edinburgh. It was a 5 hour train ride north from Nottingham and we arrived early Friday afternoon. After nearly freezing to death in Bath the week before I made sure I had layers upon layer of clothes. Edinburgh is notorious for being cold and despite all my wool and fleece I was still chilly. By the time we settled into our hostel and walked into the city center it was starting to get dark. The city is equally beautiful at night as it is during the day. All the buildings, bridges, and the castle are lit up. To warm up we stopped in Elephant House. This is the café where J.K Rowling wrote the first two Harry Potter books. She would sit for hours in the café staring out the window which overlooks an old school (inspiration for Hogwarts) and graveyard. Somehow my friends convinced me to wander the graveyard at dusk in search of a few notable graves – Tom Riddell and McGonagall – two more Harry Potter inspirations. The night finished back at our hostel for dinner where we heated up delicious soup and bread.

Inside the castle walls

Saturday morning we rose early and headed towards the castle. There is no way you can go to Edinburgh and miss the castle; it is perched on a hill in the middle of the city. The view from every angle at the top is spectacular. A visit to the castle includes touring a few royal chambers, prisons, military museums, and a view of the royal jewels (England’s are way better). We had lunch along the Royal Mile (the street that stretches from the castle to Queen Elizabeth’s current Scottish residence) in a pub. Thankfully the restaurant part was not as packed as the bar. Scotland was playing a rugby match and the pubs everywhere where filled with very noisy fans. As in Bath and Dublin, free tours are offered to visitors. The Edinburgh tour covered every major sight in the city and was extremely informative yet entertaining* We headed back to the hostel after the tour for a short warm-up/rest. 

Dinner on Saturday was at another pub where I sampled the traditional Scottish dish – Haggis. For those of you who don’t know the composition of Haggis here is Wikipedia’s definition: Haggis is a dish containing sheep’s ‘pluck’ (heart, liver, lungs) minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, and mixed with stock and traditionally simmered in the animal’s stomach. It sounds revolting, but it was surprisingly delicious! The original plan for Sunday morning was to climb Arthur’s Seat (a hill outside the city) for the best view of Edinburgh. Mother Nature had other plans though so we ended up avoiding the rain in the National Gallery and Royal Museum of Scotland. We were set to arrive back in Nottingham at 10 on Sunday evening. Our last train change was only 30 minutes from Nottingham, but we didn’t make it back to campus until 2.5 hours later. I maintain that we were at the right platform at the right time, we just got on the wrong train. 2.5 hours later, after a VERY expensive cab ride we returned home from Edinburgh.

The rolling hills of Scotland and the infamous grey sky

This past Saturday I returned to London again to spend “Thanksgiving” with our family friend Meg, her husband, and a few of their friends. It was so great to be in a kitchen again! We had chicken with cranberry sauce (because turkey isn’t available until December), stuffing, roast veg, and sweet potatoes. Dessert was pumpkin pie made by an English guy who actually prepared the pumpkin himself. Canned pumpkin does not exist in the England! Thanksgiving would not be complete without football, just of a different variety here. The Arsenal vs. Tottenham game was the main focus for part of the evening. Arsenal lost to the great disappointment to all guests. Our pseudo Thanksgiving was a great success!

*interesting fact learned on the tour: Grave robbing used to occur frequently. The thieves would arrive at dark and exhume the recently buried corpses to sell them to medical schools. Wealthy families could afford to hire a person to watch the grave for6-8 weeks after burial (the time it takes for a body to decompose so it is no longer of use to medical schools). Poorer families had no choice but to sleep on the grave to deter thieves. This is where the term “doing the graveyard shift” originated. 

Love to you all,

 Elisabeth

Week 8: Bath

Oh beautiful, glorious Bath! What a wonderful city that has now topped my list of “Favorite Travel Destinations”.

Roman Baths

My journey started fairly early on Friday, as, usual, to maximize travel time. Though Bath is only 3 hours away, trains directly there from Nottingham do not exist. Therefore, we had 2 changes along the way. Due to delays at Birmingham station (point of first change) our train was late in arriving. The next train was meant to depart at 12:35 and it was right on time…I waved to it from the platform as it left 12:35 and 25 seconds (when my friends and I arrived, huffing and puffing). Thankfully changes on trains are not nearly as complex as layovers. Since we missed our train we were able to hop on the next one without a change of ticket. Unfortunately on the “replacement” train we did not have reserved seats and ended up sitting in the vestibule right next to the toilets for the 90 minute journey.

Overlooking the river Avon

The majority of my Friday afternoon was spent at the Roman Baths. The Romans were way ahead of their time. The Baths were certainly a feat of engineering. In my opinion the British could learn a few things about plumbing from the ancient Romans. The Baths were renowned in Roman times as well in the late 18^th and early 19^th century for their restorative powers and the water was said to cure anything from gout to infertility. I was able to drink some of the legendary waters after touring the Baths. YUCK! Warm drinking water is bad enough, but add the taste of sulfur and it’s 10 times worse.

I’m slowing get accustomed to staying in hostels. I can handle communal showers and bunk beds that creak but the “snoring man” made me long for my own room. This guy needs to see a doctor. I had no idea that humans were capable of making the sound of a lawnmower/chainsaw/machine gun. My friends I laugh about it now but being kept awake by that horrendous symphony at night was not funny at 5am! I’m going to invest in some very heavy duty ear plugs for sure.

We awoke very groggy next the morning for a full day of sightseeing. My fellow Jane Austen groupie and I headed to the Bath Abbey for our Jane Austen tour. In short, I was in heaven! The tour covered all the locations referenced in Jane’s books and the places where she lived during her time in Bath. Our adorable tour guide even had quotes from her books that matched up with certain points in the tour. We rushed from this tour back the center of town to meet with the rest of our group for a trip to Stonehenge. The bus ride took about an hour and was a simply gorgeous drive through the country. The Avon Valley right around Bath is the epitome of the idyllic English countryside. The hour at the Stonehenge site passed quickly. Here’s what I learned about the fabled stones: no one knows how they got there, who put them there, or why they are there. Nonetheless, it was neat to be there in person. Later that night we braved the cold to see fireworks in celebration of Guy Fawkes Day.

Don't let the blue sky fool you...it was COLD!

On Sunday morning a few of us attended service at the Bath Abbey. It was magical to hear the boys choir sing in such a spectacular setting. Immediately following the service we left on a 2 hour tour of the city. I think we made it 45 minutes or so. None of us had expected Bath to be so cold, but it was absolutely frigid! After excusing ourselves from the tour we immediately headed to a coffee shop to warm ourselves with hot chocolate. I better get some warmer boots and gloves for my winter travels. I’m sure Prague is going to infinitely colder than England. 

We spent the rest of the day going from warm building to warm building. First were The Assembly Rooms, where the cream of British aristocracy spent their evenings listening to concerts or dancing. Next we visited the Victoria Gallery, a small museum with a collection made up almost entirely by loans from local residents. The afternoon finished at the Bath Tea Rooms for a spot of tea and scones. My train ride home was uneventful and I arrived back in Nottingham late Sunday night cold and tired, but ready to turn around and go back to Bath again.

Week 7: Notes on Nottingham

No exciting trips to report on this week. I must say though that it was nice to have a quiet week and be able to do a little studying…which is supposedly why I’m here :) Besides a few trips into town, the only excursion of the week was to Wollaton Hall, an Elizabethan mansion only a 15 minute walk from the University. The walk through the grounds to the hall was beautiful. I loved the autumn colors! The majority of the grounds have been converted into a golf course. Deer roam freely across the course and don’t seem to be bothered by the stray golf balls. It’s not rare to see a few deer in my backyard so I was content to just snap a picture and move on. To my friends though, deer were an exotic species. Deer (and squirrels) to Australians are like Kangaroo to Americans.

The exterior of Wollaton is very impressive and reminded me of one of the stately homes I’d see in one of my favorite Jane Austen films. I had expected that the interior of the home would be equally as remarkable. The Great Hall is one of the only rooms in the whole mansion that gave an idea of the former grandeur of the mansion.  The rest of Wollaton has been converted into what one of my friends called “a dead zoo.” Officially the menagerie of stuffed animals is called a National History Museum. I have never seen so many stuffed birds, insects, snakes, porcupine, armadillo…the list goes on and on. I marveled at the stuffed giraffe, but I was perfectly happy to walk quickly past the rest of the poor animals.

And now for a few notes on Notts…

The Good:

Gregg’s: The hybrid of a fast food restaurant and a bakery. They serve delicious cheese and onion pasties and donuts for cheap. I’d choose that over McDonalds any day

Primark: All university students shop here. Cheap (yet trendy) clothes, shoes, bags, pajamas, jewelry, homeware. This place has it all!

The English Vocabulary: It’s so endearing to be called ‘love’ or ‘deary’ by the person who rings up your groceries.

Cheese and Cookies: No Kraft American slices here. Even the inexpensive cheddar is amazing. As for the cookies….Digestives, tea biscuits, and hob nobs have become a staple in my room. I’m contemplating brining a separate suitcase of biscuits home with me.

The Bad:

Where are the outlets?:  All the dorm rooms I’ve been in have one group of four outlets (called power points) in a non central location. If I want to curl my hair, charge my laptop etc I’m restricted to a little corner of the room where the garbage can is found. Luckily I have a mirror in sight but most of my girlfriends don’t. Hot appliances + no mirror = danger! 

Where are the vegetables?: The choices for sides are: rice, potato  one, potato two, or plain pasta. If you’re lucky you get very undercooked carrots. Have the English never heard of a salad bar?

The Ugly:

The faucets: Instead of having one tap with a handle for hot and a handle for cold, all the taps in the halls have two separate faucets for hot and cold water.  To wash my face I’ve had to develop a method of alternating between scooping cold and hot water and attempting to not burn myself. The hot water gets ridiculously hot.

The fire alarms: I will never understand why the Uni students find it amusing to pull the fire alarms at all hours of the night. It’s happened 9 times since I’ve been here so part of my bedtime routine has becoming setting out my fire alarm shoes, pants and jacket. I learned after the first time that standing outside at 3 in the morning gets chilly.

And this weekend: Bath…and the Jane Austen Center. I will be in heaven!

Love to you all,

Elisabeth